The US National Science Foundation (NSF) today announced an investment of more than $ 100 million to establish five institutes of artificial intelligence (AI), each of which will receive approximately $ 20 million over five years. One of these, the NSF AI Institute for Artificial Intelligence and Fundamental Interactions (IAIFI), …
Read More »Study: a drop in incoming sunlight may have triggered “Snowball Lands”
At least twice in Earth’s history, almost the entire planet was locked in a layer of snow and ice. These dramatic “Snowball Earth” events occurred in rapid succession, somewhere around 700 million years ago, and evidence suggests that consecutive global glaciations set the stage for the subsequent explosion of complex, …
Read More »Ila Fiete studies how the brain performs complex calculations
While doing a postdoc about 15 years ago, Ila Fiete began looking for teaching jobs in computational neuroscience, a field that uses mathematical tools to investigate brain function. However, there were no advertised positions in theoretical or computational neuroscience at that time in the United States. “It wasn’t really a …
Read More »A mechanical way to stimulate neurons.
In addition to responding to electrical and chemical stimuli, many of the body’s neural cells can also respond to mechanical effects, such as pressure or vibration. But these responses have been more difficult for researchers to study because there has been no easily controllable method of inducing such mechanical stimulation …
Read More »Address the disinformation epidemic with “In the Event of a Moon Disaster”
Can you recognize a digitally manipulated video when you watch one? It is more difficult than most people think. As the technology to produce realistic deepfakes becomes more readily available, distinguishing fact from fiction will only become more challenging. A new digital storytelling project at MIT’s Advanced Virtuality Center aims …
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